well may.

"I am, at present, occupied principally about these unhappy
proscriptions and exiles, which have taken place here on account of
politics. It has been a miserable sight to see the general
desolation in families. I am doing what I can for them, high and
low, by such interest and means as I possess or can bring to bear.
There have been thousands of these proscriptions within the last
month in the Exarchate, or (to speak modernly) the Legations.
Yesterday, too, a man got his back broken, in extricating a dog of
mine from under a mill-wheel. The dog was killed, and the man is in
the greatest danger. I was not present--it happened before I was
up, owing to a stupid boy taking the dog to bathe in a dangerous
spot. I must, of course, provide for the poor fellow while he
lives, and his family, if he dies. I would gladly have given a
much greater sum than that will come to that he had never been
hurt. Pray, let me hear from you, and excuse haste and hot weather.

"Yours, &c.

"You may have probably seen all sorts of attacks upon me in some
gazettes in England some months ago. I only saw them, by Murray's
bounty, the other day. They call me 'Plagiary,' and what not. I
think I now, in my time, have been accused of _every_ thing.

"I have not given you details of little events here; but they have
been trying to make me out to be the chief of a conspiracy, and
nothing but their want of proofs for an _English_ investigation has
stopped them. Had it been a poor native, the suspicion were enough,
as it has been for hundreds.

"Why don't you write on Napoleon? I have no spirits, nor 'estro' to
do so. His overthrow, from the beginning, was a blow on the head to
me. Since that period, we have been the slaves of fools. Excuse
this long letter. _Ecco_ a translation literal of a French epigram.

"Egle, beauty and poet, has two little crimes,
She makes her own face, and does _not_ make her rhymes.

"I am going to ride, having been warned not to ride in a particular
part of the forest, on account of the ultra-politicians.

"Is there no chance of your return to England, and of _our_
Journal? I would have published the two plays in it--two or three
scenes per number--and, indeed, _all_ of mine in it. If you went
to England, I would do so s